Selfhosted @lemmy.world glasgitarrewelt @feddit.de 1y ago

OpenWRT settings for PiVPN

I have a Pi running PiVPN, which is now connected to a router running OpenWRT. Does anyone have a link for me where someone describes how I have to set up OpenWRT regarding port forwarding and Firewall-Settings for PiVPN/Wireguard?

I THINK I have the port forwarding figured out, but the firewall-settings confuse me. Do I even need to set up a traffic rule?

It was easy on my Fritzbox-Router, but I find OpenWRT to be a bit more complex with all the functions it offers.

4 comments

Honestly I'm not familiar with OpenWRT, but I would guess you can set up a VPN using OpenWRT without a Pi (assuming your router has the CPU muscle to run that). I know you can do it with PFsense and OPNsense.And I think the whole point of setting up a VPN is to AVOID port forwarding. It's safer to have no ports forwarded.
- You are right, it is possible to set up a wireguard VPN on OpenWRT and I am planning to do that. At this point getting the Pi running is more like an exercise to get to know OpenWRT better.
- I think the whole point of setting up a VPN is to AVOID port forwarding. It’s safer to have no ports forwarded.
  
  Yes, but if the only thing you're forwarding is the VPN, it's fine. There isn't really any big issue with forwarding anyway, the issue is with exposing potentially vulnerable services. And if you take down a service but forget to disable port forwarding, and something you don't want public ends up being accessible from the Internet.
If anyone stumbles accross this post, here is how I solved it for me:

PiVPN doesn't need any special firewall-treatment in OpenWRT, just use port forwarding (Source zone: WAN, Destination: LAN, with the Port you chose, 51820 is the standard for wireguard)

A special problem I had: I used NordVPN on OpenWRT to tunnel all my traffic through there. When I connected the PiVPN, it didn't work at first. I had to use something called PBR - Policy-Based-Routing to send all my traffic from the PiVPN to WAN. It was easy with the openWRT-app vpn-policy-routing plus luci-app-vpn-policy-routing